Heh...Funny. Although I definitely don't see it as a strike to MS Office. Not even a competitor. It might be useful in lesser developed countries where people aren't already hooked on MS Office, though.

Wasn't the purchase of Urchin a strike to other analytics companies? Google is still clueless when it comes to implementing these things properly to the masses. It's a cute purchase that we will never see fully used.

when the $100 laptop with a linux or google OS comes out, with firefox installed as the default browser, and when there's a writely link from your gmail and from your blogger blog and your gdrive and from your personalized google account, the masses will enlist.

why didnt msft acquire writely, and why are they moving so slowly in terms of getting office online?

I tested writely before and still have an account there. If I was in school or was using it for home stuff I could see it being cool. For a business it puts too much faith in other companies for my liking. I don't let people who I outsource writing to use GMail to send documents back and forth, so I can't see using writely for anything of any importance.

First, they [MS] value QA testing. This is driven by the second thing, which is the support requirement for each new product. On the other hand, Google throws it out there and hopes it sticks. Support? What's that?

Up to a point.

It's just as true that MS spends 6 years developing an elephant of system that does not work (therefore NEEDS support), while G makes small, lite, simple things that work.

Of course there are limitations in the uses of G's stuff; and few of their products are directly comparable. But MS haven't genuinely innovated in years. G does in its sleep.

And when G buy other innovators, their work sees the light of day. While MS usually buy to kill the (potential) competition.

And when G buy other innovators, their work sees the light of day. While MS usually buy to kill the (potential) competition.

I tend to disagree that there's a difference here. Both things are simply what companies do, including those two. Also, lousy products are found in both camps - that's what happens in R&D, sometimes you hit and sometimes you miss.

Microsoft have a larger range of products and they are good at integrating purchased solutions into existing products, so their purchases see the light as well. Examle from two days ago

Market share is a commodity to some extent. It can be bought, and that's what larger firms usually do. In quite a few cases it's cheaper to buy the competition than it is to beat them.

Google sofar haven't really bought competitors to existing Google products. Why? Because their portfolio is too damn small. Their only income-generating product of importance is adwords/adsense and which competitor should they buy here - Overture? Even if they could, would that have a significant effect on their market share or revenues? One that justifies the costs? Personally I don't think so, at least not at this moment.

So, you can't automatically assume that lack of history equals lack of intent.